Which ethnicity has the smallest women
Executive summary
Available international data point to national and regional averages rather than cleanly defined "ethnicities," and the shortest average adult female statures in published country lists are found in Central America (Guatemala) and parts of South Asia; however, because ethnicity, national origin, genetics, nutrition and sampling methods are tightly confounded in the datasets, it is not possible from the cited reporting to name a single ethnicity as definitively having the "smallest women" without important caveats [1] [2] [3].
1. What the headline numbers show: country and regional minima
Surveys that compare average adult female height by country put Guatemala among the shortest national averages — MedicineNet reported an average just under 4 feet 9 inches (about 144.8 cm) for women in Guatemala and the Netherlands at the tall extreme (about 170 cm) as a contrasting example [1]; global research aggregators such as Our World in Data show consistent regional patterns where South Asia and parts of Central America sit at the lower end of female height distributions compared with Europe and Central Asia [2].
2. Why “ethnicity” is a slippery category in height data
Most public sources report measured or surveyed heights by country or by administratively defined racial/ethnic categories (for example U.S. surveys), not by fine-grained ethnic groupings; Wikipedia’s overview of country height data cautions researchers about sampling bias, differing methodologies and the fact that national averages may hide large within-country variation, so translating a short national average into a single ethnic label misstates the underlying evidence [3].
3. The genetic and environmental tangle behind short averages
Height is heavily heritable but responsive to environment: studies and reviews cited across health outlets estimate genetics explain a large share of height variance while nutrition, disease burden and socioeconomic conditions explain a meaningful remainder — which is why national and regional averages can shift across generations as living conditions change [1] [4] [2].
4. What U.S. data illustrate about within-country ethnic differences
U.S. surveys provide an example of how averages vary by race/ethnicity: CDC national data give an overall measured average female height of about 63.5 inches (161.3 cm) for U.S. adult women [5], while clinical summaries and secondary analyses note that the U.S. average height differs by racial and ethnic categories in survey reports, underscoring that “smallest” depends on the population slice analyzed [6] [4] [7].
5. How to read claims that a particular ethnicity has the “smallest women”
Claims that a named ethnicity has the “smallest women” often rest on country-level statistics or on selective subgroup comparisons; such claims must be weighed against methodological warnings about sampling, age-cohort effects, self-reported versus measured height, and changing nutrition and health over time — all highlighted in the country-by-country compilations and methodological notes in the sources [3] [2].
6. Bottom line and what the sources permit journalists to conclude
Based on the cited reporting, the most defensible statement is that some Central American populations (e.g., national averages reported for Guatemala) and certain South Asian populations rank among the shortest in global average female height studies, but the data do not allow a blanket, evidence-backed declaration that a single, clearly defined "ethnicity" has the absolute smallest women because ethnicity is not consistently or precisely measured in international height datasets and national/regional environmental factors play a major role [1] [2] [3].